skies are closing in
by i set my sims on fire
Summary: She imagines him running his hands through her hair and kissing the tears away, but he never does - LilyTeddyVictoire.


**A/N;** **so, basically, i have no idea what the hell this is and yeah, i need to get out of the habit of writing strange things in the middle of the night.**

**Warning: probable clichés and bad language.**

_skies are closing in_

Lily was born when he was eleven and Victoire was ten and she still looked at him with stars in her eyes. And he was excited because it was like he was going to get the little sister he'd never had, and he held her for the first time with Victoire's arm resting on his.

But now, everything has changed because Victoire cries herself to sleep and Lily is nothing close to being like his little sister, seventeen years on.

Lily spends her last day of summer clinging on to Teddy's arm and he's laughing with her and smiling with her, and they arrive late to the annual Weasley-Potter summer reunion, Lily's hair wild and tangled by the salt of the sea water and Teddy's eyes the same hazel as hers, and the sunshine is speckled across Lily's cheeks whilst Victoire hides in the shadows with an aching pang where her heart should be.

She knows, somehow, because the way Teddy looks at Lily now is the same way he looked at her when he was seventeen and she was sixteen and they had the world at their feet and Lily was barely six years old.

And it's kind of really unfair, because Victoire has been in love with Teddy for twenty years now, much longer than Lily's even been alive, and-

And she takes dainty sips from her coffee mug and hopefully, she'll wash the hurt away.

x

Teddy goes to see Lily off at the station, the same way he did Victoire when she went for her last year and he'd just graduated, and he spent the year in London, switching between part-time jobs and drinking a little too much like eighteen year olds do but remaining faithful to Victoire even when his flatmates were onto a new girl each week, because he loved her back then, and shit, has it really been ten years? He'd apparate to Hogsmeade and she'd kiss him on the lips, and he wouldn't think oh-so inappropriate thoughts about her little cousin, eleven years too young.

Victoire sits and she hugs her knees, her long blonde hair falls across her creamy skin and she wishes that it was red pooling against her back, and that freckles dotted her face and that she was what he wanted.

She thinks about that day and how he'd kissed her goodbye properly the way he never does now, and how her little cousin James had spotted them and ran off to tell his family, her family, and how nine-year-old Lily was stood right there looking crestfallen and how Teddy had laughed and kissed Vic's nose and said 'they're gonna find out sometime', and the way she'd smiled so wide.

Victoire wonders if he's kissing Lily the same way now, cupping her small face in his hands, and-

And the thoughts swirl inside her head like raspberry ripple ice cream, and she feels sick and overwhelmed, and she'd like to switch her mind off, now, please.

x

Teddy comes home and he doesn't say a word to Victoire, he simply goes outside into the sun and sits and buries his fingers beneath the sand, and she knows, then, that he's almost painfully counting down the days until Lily comes home.

She'd feel bad for him, if the situation weren't so sickening.

Maybe the worst part is that she can't even leave, she is just counting down the days until he stops lying and it's less illegal. There's a calendar on the kitchen wall and it's pretty, hand-made by Rose as an easy way out of buying Christmas presents and each month has a series of family snapshots and Victoire notices that when Teddy studies the important dates for September, his eyes linger a little too long on a photo of Lily wearing a dress that suited her too much with shy hazel eyes and an unsure smile and that long scarlet hair, and it makes Victoire feel ill.

She finds herself marking the days that go by on that same calendar in a red sharpie pen, crossing out each date with a neat X. It takes her a while to figure out that she's not counting down the days until Christmas, or the next Weasley reunion, or even her and Teddy's third wedding anniversary. She is counting down the days until Lily's eighteenth birthday in May, the day when it won't be illegal any more and Teddy will almost certainly leave Victoire for good, disappearing hand-in-hand with Lily, who has never really cared what people make of her, anyway.

It sickens her, because Lily is seventeen and Teddy's twenty-eight and Victoire is still trying to work out when he stopped loving her in favour of her too-pretty, too-young little cousin.

She can't, so she counts down the days and cries herself to sleep, and Teddy doesn't give a damn.

x

Victoire leaves, one day, not for long, not long enough, and he doesn't even notice because they make love at gone midnight and she doesn't fall asleep but he does, and in his sleep his hair turns the same colour as Lily's eyes and she notices in the lamplight as she wipes the tears away.

And she pulls on a white nightgown and drapes a grey cardigan over her shoulders and doesn't put any shoes on, she simply leaves the small cottage on the seashore and lets the sand fall through her toes like an hourglass because her time is running out. She stands on the shore and the seawater envelops her toes, and it should be cold but she doesn't care to think about it, and then she wades into the ocean until the water is up to her waist and she finally realises that she is shivering.

And so Victoire leaves the peace of the ocean behind, and upon entering the house the front door clicks shut behind her, and she boils the kettle and goosebumps cover her arms and bare thighs, her teeth chattering.

She peels the sodden clothing off of her arms and over her head, draping them over a wooden kitchen chair and smiles, sadly, at the homely kitchen and the real reason why Teddy doesn't want children running around on the cool stone floor. The house is too pretty, picture-perfect, except there is ivy coiling up the walls outside and nobody is watering the flower beds, and weeds wage wars on her once beautiful plants, the pretty glow of reds and pinks, yellows and orange wilting, tearing into pieces, into nothing, and there are patches of damp on the ceiling of the spare room.

She creeps upstairs and pulls on an old t-shirt of Teddy's, big and long so that it dips past her stomach and covers the top of her thighs, and she wears fluffy rainbow socks that Teddy bought her a year ago on her feet. She is far from dry and still shivering when she returns to the kitchen and she sips her coffee daintily, too pre-occupied with cheating husbands and younger woman to care about her discomfort.

Lily Potter laughs at her from the moving picture on the wall calendar.

x

Victoire wakes up, curled into a ball beneath the soft cream-coloured duvet and she's unbearably warm and stuffy, and she can't help realizing that she fell asleep with her hair buried into Teddy's shoulder, leaving wet patches where she cried into the soft skin, because she made love to him at gone midnight and he slept with his arm draped around her slim body and his hair still turned that same shade of Lily, and he's not in love with Victoire, he's just lonely and Lily's not quite eighteen and Harry would kill him.

Teddy's gone to work, supposedly, he left a note on the wood kitchen table in his almost illegible scrawl about how they were short-staffed and they needed him, and Victoire peels a banana slowly and doesn't believe him.

She is an empty shell, and she is still beautiful but her bright blue eyes don't sparkle anymore and her hair is tangled and un-brushed, and she's given up on clinging on to small fragments of perfection.

It's November and she's not returning her parents' letters. Bill and Fleur alike are growing anxious, but Victoire is too tired to pick up a pen, so she doesn't, and the creamy sheets of paper she has laid out just in case remain bare and her family worry from afar. She's missed Halloween, she realises, she's missed Lucy's birthday, too, and she tries to find it in herself to care.

Teddy's been working to often and he's been signing his letters 'love, Teddy and Victoire', to keep the family and prying eyes away so that people don't see how broken they are, and his face lights up whenever he receives a letter from Lily and Victoire is not allowed to read them, not ever, so he goes to all the effort of hiding them in a small box in the attic.

Victoire could read them, easily, if she wanted. He could be at work and she could summon them and flick through Lily's small, neat print, and he couldn't do a fucking thing- but she's too broken for love letters, especially the kind addressed to her husband from her 'baby cousin', and so she doesn't.

x

The Christmas holidays arrive for Lily, and Teddy goes to meet her at the station and leaves Victoire alone at home. She imagines some sort of romantic reunion where Lily jumps into Teddy's arms and he kisses the top of her head as she wraps her arms around him. She finds that she is barely even bitter anymore, she barely feels any anger. She is just sad and lonely, full of a thousand disappointments. He comes home too late with bright eyes, smiling, and Victoire imagines him running his hands through her hair and kissing the tears away, but he never does. He greets her with a kiss on the cheek, and she asks how Lily and Hugo are doing and he tells her Lily is great, she's doing so well, gushing about her achievements with not a word on Hugo, and Victoire wonders if he notices the red swelling around her eyes.

She thinks about her seventh year and meeting Teddy in Hogsmeade, the way he rested his hand on hers in the Three Broomsticks and how he'd cuddled up to her and tickled her mercilessly, and walking her back to the castle. She remembers graduating and how proud he was and the way he'd kissed her afterwards, and the feeling of waking up in his arms every morning and falling asleep to his heartbeat at night when they'd first moved in together. She remembers the butterflies spearing her insides when she'd walked down the aisle and he'd stared at her as if she was an angel, and this is really not helping.

She goes to bed early, claiming a headache and Teddy doesn't seem to care, he's writing another letter, addressed to Lily Potter, and all of a sudden her head really does hurt.

x

It seems her family's concerns have grown because a week later she is being forced out of her house by her sister Dom and her cousin Roxy and their smiles are too bright and their words too cautious.

They go Christmas shopping, picking out cards for their cousins and presents, too, and Victoire's vision is slightly blurry on account of too many sleepless nights but she just barely catches Dom and Roxy exchanging a 'look', and she wonders when she got this bad.

She leaves early, straight after lunch and Dom tries to convince her to stay but Victoire shakes her head and a trail of excuses leave her mouth, but it is damned obvious that nobody believes her. They let her go, and she apparates home, and she sighs longingly at the front door and replays Teddy unlocking it for the first time after they'd moved in with a brand-new key, and she'd kissed him, wrapping her arms around him in a way she hadn't in so long.

The door clicks shut behind her and it seems to echo through the house and she hears a faint- 'fuck' from upstairs and her heart sinks but she already knows.

She climbs the stairs slowly, and it seems she won't need that calendar anymore because the end is already here.

And their bedroom door- hers and Teddy's- is shut, and Victoire sighs, tiredly, but she pushes it open and Teddy is struggling to pull a t-shirt over his head and Lily Luna is sat up on _Victoire's _side of the bed, the duvet pulled up over her chest, her shoulders bare and her red hair messy, tumbling down her back and over the bed, the scarlet curls looking so vibrant and quite frankly wrong against the cream.

'Vic- I-' the words are pouring out of Teddy's mouth, explanations, apologies, he doesn't mean a single damned word.

Victoire is miles away. She is not here, and Teddy has not just desecrated her heart by fucking her seventeen year old cousin in her _own _bed. She is light years away and it is still Victoire and Teddy, childhood sweethearts and he's holding her hand and her eyes aren't dulled and worn. She is laughing and he is too, and he's tickling her and kissing her on the cheek. And then she is curled up in bed with him and she runs her hands through his turquoise hair and he's telling her that he loves her. That he will always love her.

'I- Lily-'

'Get out, Teddy,' she murmurs, and her voice is faint and this is so not happening.

'Vic-'

'Please,' she says, and there is an ache in her chest and tears prick in the corners of her eyes. 'Lily, go.'

And then she steps out of the room and allows them to change or kiss or- this really isn't helping. And a few minutes later Lily is stumbling out of the room, and she doesn't utter a word, not an apology, nothing, and there is no shame written on her pretty face. Teddy follows, and his eyes are hazel just like Lily's, but ridden with guilt and he looks close to tears and what the fuck does he have to cry about?

Victoire sleeps on the couch that night, alone, trying not to picture Lily's small body curled up against Teddy's, the way hers used to fit so perfectly.

x

Christmas day comes and Victoire is alone, Teddy has not come back and Victoire almost hopes that James and Albus find out and lay into Teddy for screwing their little sister, because it's pretty damned wrong, and she'd like to hope that maybe Louis would smack him around the face too, because he broke his sister's heart and she thinks Teddy would rather suit a black eye right now.

But then she doubts it because Teddy is like everyone's big brother, and Lily is sarcastic and funny and pretty whereas Victoire is detached and empty and who wouldn't prefer Lily, really?

And she still loves Teddy so much it hurts and she doesn't want him to be in pain, so maybe-

But then she finds herself crawling into the attic at 6 am on Christmas morning and opening Teddy's private box and reading those letters Lily sent him one by one and the words come pouring out of Lily's heart, and Victoire can imagine each of Teddy's replies and it hurts, it fucking hurts.

x

_I'm not a child, Teddy, we can do whatever we like-_

_I wish you were here with me, right now, I want to curl up next to you and I want you to kiss me and stroke my hair and-_

_I miss you. When are you next coming to see me?_

_I love you-_

_You need to tell her, Ted, it's not fair, and-_

_Does all of this make me a bad person?_

_Love, Lily  
xxx_

x

She finds herself throwing up into the toilet basin with tears running down her cheeks before its even 8'o'clock.

x

Teddy goes to see Lily off at the Hogwarts Express, and this time, he doesn't come home. Victoire doesn't tell Harry, despite Dom's insistence that she should because what they did was unacceptable and Teddy deserves a beating, and-

It's not until months after, when the divorce is settled and the pretty cottage is sold, that they do tell Lily's family, and people catch on and Victoire gets too much sympathy and Teddy a punch in the face, and their cousin's shake their head at Lily in disappointment.

He marries Lily, in the end, and a few years down the line there's a baby on the way. And Victoire burns the love letters and sells the house because she can't rid herself of the image of Lily Luna, barely covering herself with the duvet covers, biting nervously on the lips that had just been kissing those of a married man.

Victoire moves into a flat in the city and she can no longer escape to the waves lapping against her ankles. But she is no longer running in circles, and she'll never again have to lie awake in bed against Teddy's unwelcoming body watching his hair turn hazel, never again.

The hurt lessens, after time, and someday she'll meet a man who'll run his hands through her hair and kiss her tears away. He won't be Teddy, but no matter how much he is what she wants, he is not what she needs, so maybe this will work.

She sips her coffee, and waits for the pain to fade.

**um and yeah basically- even you liked this even a tiny bit, i'd love you forever if you left a review! **


End file.
